Real Power
by BlackNhite
Summary: "Tell me, what is it that you hate?" One-shot


It's been a long time...

This idea has been rattling around in my noggin probably since the end of Volume Four. Since I'd been feeling a bit of "the bug" and with Volume Six premiering I thought I'd finally put my thoughts into words. I may have... _slightly_ overshot the new season's actual premier... details, details! On that note, I should probably mention that I've elected to block myself from watching any of the new season until this one-shot was complete. You know, motivation and all that. This being said, expect this story to contradict any reveals we've gotten thus far within Volume Six.

This little scene is based off of one of my favorite sequences from a movie I probably haven't seen near enough times for my liking. See if you can pick it out by the end, I'm not exactly subtle about the source material. Some more extensive **Author's Notes** at the bottom.

* * *

For yet another sunset, the normally silent glade echoed with the rhythmic _thunk… thunk_ of steel against stone. The bleached forms of the surrounding trees were once again witness to the odd habits of the two-leggeds, forever in quiet contemplation of their strange ways. Or, perhaps being trees, they in fact thought little of such matters.

Two humanoid figures occupied the small clearing, an older male and a smaller female. The elder one sat his denim-clad rump upon a pair of travel packs, their forms nearly full to bursting. Leaning forward he rested crossed arms along the wide hilt of a tall broadsword, its sharpened tip buried in a tuft of grass. Saffron eyes tracked the lazy motion before him, onyx lips set in a line tight with annoyance as pointed ears drooped ever so slightly.

" _Ha… Ha…!"_

A scarlet cloak swayed and jerked as its wearer repeated her pattern. Short, blackened locks tipped with smokey crimson followed along, whipping against her sweat-soaked brow and cheeks. Silver eyes strained to remain open as dry breath heaved free of the girl's arid mouth. And still she persisted, rotating her form into practiced motion, swinging her weapon once more into the center of her quarry.

Once again Crescent Rose sunk into the rock-like surface of the petrified behemoth. And once more she couldn't cut through the damn thing.

"You know, these trees are known for being particularly sturdy."

Ruby Rose stared ahead, refusing to break sight with her "opponent" even as she returned a quick, "You don't say?"

"I do," the man beamed, a smile sliding across his darkened features. With a short hop he rose, using the sword to push himself to standing height. Being a bit above average in size, he absolutely towered over the girl in front of him. Fingers clad in rough leather brushed back a rebellious gray strand, clearing it from his vision. "Knew a guy once who fashioned himself a suit of armor from the stuff. Said the structure had something to do with exposure to dust over a long period… thousands of years at the very least."

The girl with the silver eyes only half listened to her companion's short tale, her efforts focused on freeing her scythe from the stalwart form of her current enemy. _"Huff…_ armor? How in the – _yaahh!"_ Ruby yelped as her brilliant strategy, planting both feet upon the side of the tree and tugging with all her might at Crescent Rose, betrayed her within moments of its implementation. The man's good humor, which had been slowly rising until this point, burst forth in raucous laughter.

"Mr. Ariado," Ruby half shouted, half sighed, her anger mostly knocked out of her following her short plummet.

"Just Ariado, child. 'Sir' Ariado, if you must attach a title." Reclaiming himself from his hunched posture the man fixed his prone "protege" with a warm gaze. It did well to expel any lingering frustration, the only reminder an adorable pout stapled across the girl's features. "As for my acquaintance… let's just say he possessed a rather interesting semblance. One which made relations between himself and the SDC pretty much doomed from the onset."

The promise of a juicy story prompted Ruby to speak, but her efforts were thwarted as an open palm was presented to her. The reaper blinked twice before rolling to her feet, ignoring the offering of aide and grasping Crescent Rose. Ariado pulled back his hand, crossing his arms as he returned to standing.

"Hmm? No break for you?"

"I've already taken too many." The girl's delivery, swift and short, gave the man pause. His fouler mood was setting in again.

"Take your time. It won't do to burn yourself out."

Ruby froze mid-swing, the point of her scythe hovering a hair's width from the rock-like bark of the tree. As she turned to face him, Ariado could feel a deep pit form in his stomach. The cold lack of emotion he saw was heart wrenching, utterly alien on the face of a girl who naturally exuded so much life. He could see _that_ as well, dwelling in the back of her gaze. The sense of being lost was one he was all too familiar with.

"Back into stance, first position." If the sudden shift to "mentor mode" shocked her, Ruby hid it well. Without a word her posture shifted, weight re-balanced as she drew her scythe backwards. Ariado paced around her flank, inspecting her form. Seeing no significant improvements needed, he barked the order, "Strike."

Ruby's weapon surged forward, her rotating form giving power to the swing. Crescent Rose sunk its blade a third of the way into the stone-like bark of the tree. Before frustration could settle in again, Ariado relayed, "Recover, back to first position."

The girl yanked her weapon free with one tight pull, the action much easier now that some old dude was shouting orders at her. She hadn't made it back to a ready position for more than a moment when "Sir" Ariado ordered another strike. By the third _thwack_ of blade on rock Ruby had settled into a hasty rhythm. Her breath came out in muted _huffs_ , The quickened pace and growing anger draining her energy. And all the while Ariado walked in slow circles around her.

"What do you hate?"

Ruby halted, startled by the question. She glanced at her instructor, immediately cowed by the piercing look he gave in return. At once she was back in her pattern, Crescent Rose splitting the air in wide, powerful arcs.

"Don't stop moving," the dark man affirmed, "Tell me, what do you hate?"

 _Thwack,_ grunt, pull. _Thwack,_ grunt, pull. It took the girl two cycles to organize her thoughts. "I… I hate what happened to us," she breathed hoarsely between strikes.

"Elaborate," intoned Ariado, pivoting to walk around her counter-clockwise as he thumbed the light stubble on his chin.

"Beacon," Ruby huffed, sweat forming on her brow. "I hate… that we were attacked – that we were _betrayed_." Another blow to the hardened trunk, this time the scythe's blade sinking halfway in.

"There must be more."

Ruby tore her weapon straight back, ripping a sizable chunk out of her target. The skull-sized mass meant little compared to the tree at large. Undeterred, she readied another slash. "I hate," _thunk_ , "being afraid..."

"You're scared," asked Ariado, head cocking to the side in an innocent display of question. "Why?"

"We couldn't do anything! The entire world was going to hell and there wasn't anything we could do!" To anyone who knew Ruby, even spending just a single day in her presence, the explosive response would have been jarring. If Ariado felt as such, it stayed hidden behind a mask of passive interest.

A minute of pause ensued, Ruby's frame heaving with labored breaths as she continued to level a cooling glare towards her aloof instructor. When the coal colored man gave a short turn of the head, nodding back towards the scarred tree, Ruby resumed stance without comment. Ariado grinned at the show of focus.

 _Thwack,_ grunt, pull. _Thwack,_ grunt, pull.

"You felt powerless, then?"

The girl faltered the tiniest bit, barely a hitch in her movement. The elder huntsman chose not to comment, awaiting her response. Ruby tore her scythe from the petrified bark, speaking as she returned to first position. "Yes."

Ariado stood off to the side of the training target, crouching down into a seated stance. He sat in full view of Ruby, entertaining her with his usual smile. She couldn't help but find the expression rather vexing at the moment.

"You were weak."

Crescent Rose cut deep into the stone-like flesh, concealing the entirety of its blade. Ruby pulled the weapon free without pause, overlooking the bright sheen that briefly danced across her weapon's edge. "Yes," she spat in a hoarse whisper, hurling another slash against her target.

"Incapable."

 _Thwack-_ grunt-pull. "Yes." _Thwack_ -grunt-pull.

"And you-"

 _Thwack!_

"Couldn't-"

 _Shred!_

"Save-"

 _Thwack!_

"Anyone."

" _YEEEESSSS!"_

The anguished howl accentuated the scythe's withdrawal, the force of its movement almost throwing the little reaper into a stumble. She held her ground with grim determination, eyes suddenly alight with blazing streams of silver. A similar glare raced up the handle of Crescent Rose, coalescing into a shining luster which consumed its blade.

With a savage roar Ruby whipped her weapon forwards, the silver blade impacting the rocky surface with a screaming _hiss_ akin to raging flame. Crescent Rose cleaved clear through the hardened trunk in an instant, the powerful strike and lack of resistance throwing its wielder into a wild spin. There was a brief _clang_ of steel on steel before Ruby found herself about-faced, the scythe's blade burying itself into the earth with a meteoric crash.

The petrified behemoth found itself in the curious position of sudden weightlessness as a significant portion of its lower section was now missing completely. It took two full seconds before reality caught on to the situation and the titanic beast of frozen foliage pitched over and away from the small clearing. Ruby sat back and watched as the tower of the forest collapsed through the wall of bramble and bark forming the woodland beyond, slashing a deep gouge in the canopy.

Ariado whistled off to the side, the sound coming to notice only after the thunderous crash of the petrified giant's tumble. The dark man sat in that same, crouched stance, his long-sword drawn and braced by both hands in a blocking placement over his left side. He'd moved several meters away from his previous spot, posted at the end of long trench dug through the forest floor.

He stood in a smooth, steady motion. From his frame, a fine layer of pale dust fell in a short plume before dissipating into the air. Two swift brushes of a palm through his grayed mane kicked up another shower of particles. Satisfied with his own efforts, Ariado cast a long sweep of the area, staring past the newly formed stump as he commented, "Not bad for a first timer."

Ruby's confused expression turned once more to awe as she set her sight on the scene beyond her fallen target. Though the wall of petrified forest stood strong, save the mess of destruction caused by the downed behemoth, it did not stand unscathed. An even, chalk-hued line marred the standing trees in front of the girl, broken only by the empty space between the stonified foliage. The massive gouges must have been as wide as Ruby's torso and just as deep. At the realization that she had cut such wounds into bodies at least four meters past her original target, the girl at last voiced her thoughts.

" _Gurk!"_

"I suppose that's about the level of eloquence I'd expected."

Her instructor had approached without her notice, a not entirely impressive feat given Ruby's distracted state. Even when Ariado's palm found her shoulder the reaper refused to turn away from the show of destruction. The man lost his patience pretty quick and simply turned the girl's frame to face him.

"Listen here," he began, hazel pools gazing into orbs of silver, "you'll never get anywhere trying to fight hatred with hatred."

At this Ariado lowered himself to eye level. "Power girl, real power, does not come from anger." Raising his right arm, he jabbed a pair of fingers lightly into the space above Ruby's heart. "It comes from truth."

The somewhat slack-jawed expression that had occupied Ruby's features morphed into a tiny smile. Her eyes told a different story, still caught up in troubled thoughts, wracked by a silent pain. But that hopeful light which had seemed so diminished as of late did burn a little bit brighter.

With both hands Ruby delivered a good smack to her cheeks, shaking her head like a wet dog before jumping to her feet in a childish display of energy. A quick look around showed a significant lack of her instructor's presence. A more thorough search found the man marching out of the clearing, back towards camp. As an added detail, he wasn't carrying either of their packs.

"Hey! Did you really expect me to carry both of these things!? They're heavy! Why did we even bring this much stuff if we were only gonna be out here for a few hours?"

Perhaps it was fortunate that, with his back turned to her, Ruby could not see the amused grin stretching across Ariado's face. Not that she couldn't guess as much from his chiding tone.

"Consider it training. Or perhaps a lesson in 'truth,' as it were. Whatever works."

* * *

 **Author's Notes**

Could I have used Qrow or Ozpin instead? Maybe some other established figure and simply flub their reasons for crossing paths with team RNJR? Sure, it wouldn't have been much of a stretch. But I wanted an outsider. I liked the "flavor" of that more, this potential to flush out the wider world of Remnant through my own eyes.

Ariado was such a simple character to come up with. I knew his name before anything else because, at the time, I strangely had that second generation spider-Pokemon, Ariados, stuck on my mind. Take away a letter and suddenly you have this oddly foreign sounding name to be used for an oddly foreign character. I wanted him to be someone who was very much outside of "civilization," very removed from the ministrations of Ozpin and the four kingdoms as a whole. It doesn't amount to much here other than the implied knowledge our man possesses regarding the silver-eyed warriors (clearly, a fan of **Claymore** ) but I like the open-ended potential should I decide to utilize Ariado in further works. With the way I keep conjuring up more details for his backstory, its a likely outcome.

Yeah, this is pretty much the training scene from **Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter**. I thought this dialogue exchange worked really well in the context of **RWBY** post Volume Three, where our titular characters have been dropped to their lowest points and are now working to pick up the pieces. I really wanted Ruby as our "trainee" in this scenario as a means of confronting feelings she's kept buried beneath a sunny exterior throughout the course of the fourth volume. That said, I don't really have a hard "set point" within the canon where this exchange may have taken place. I feel it could work in a good deal of places throughout Volumes Four and Five.

I sprinkled in a tiny bit more to the "power from truth" speech at the end. It comes from a... lesser known series from Type Moon. The exchange between master and student was strikingly similar in tone and ideology so I sort of slammed the two together. Kudos to you if you know the series' name.


End file.
